Modern Wisdom - Skid Row To Appalachia: The Forgotten People Of Rural America - Peter Santenello - #1132

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

Peter Santenello is an independent journalist, YouTuber, & author. Who are the forgotten people of rural America? The country’s political and moral divisions may stem not only from disagreement, but from distance, countless communities and subcultures living entirely separate lives, with little understanding of one another. So what is life really like in these overlooked towns, who still calls them home, and do they represent a version of the “real America” the rest of the country has forgotten? Expect to learn what Peter learned about America from traveling to 85 different countries, what’s actually going on in rural America nobody really sees or has forgotten about, what’s actually going on in the drug crisis in America, Peter’s biggest lessons from the Amish, the most misunderstood community in America and much more… Sponsors: MW Merch is now live - for 6 days only! Shop now at https://mwmerch.com See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠ Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get up to 20% off Timeline’s leading longevity and cellular health supplement at https://timeline.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 15% off your first order of my favourite Non-Alcoholic Brew at https://athleticbrewing.com/modernwisdom Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠https://chatgpt.com Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠ Email: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm starting in Oni fans and I'm selling merch. This has taken way too long and I'm very sorry, but it is so worth it. The designs are unreal. We've upgraded the blank so they're even better quality than last time. And this bursting heart design with Japanese text in the middle is just so beautiful. Also, your girlfriend's new favorite hoodie. I apologize to anybody who buys this because I get the sense that your girlfriend's just going to steal it. All of it is available right now at mwmerch.com and it's only available for six days.

So get it. Once it's gone, you won't be able to buy it again. completely sold out, never to be printed in the future, mwmarch.com. What was your original inspiration? What drove you to do this? I was here in Austin. It's so cool because I lived here early 2000s,

worked as a waiter at Fleming Steakhouse, and I just had these dreams of traveling the world. Can't wait to see the world one day because I didn't travel growing up. Our family didn't go anywhere. Always wanted to go to Europe. And my goal was save $20,000 in two years. Go to Europe.

seven months, get a Ducati in Italy, ripped that thing through the ops, send it home, have my life figured out. Bro, that's a fucking dream. That is an absolute dream. But then I went,

I did a winter in Switzerland, snowboarding, doing every job imaginable, and then flew. I'm like, what's this place called the Republic of Georgia? I've never heard of that.

I took it one way, Republic of Georgia, landed, all the mafiosa got off the plane, which was the whole plane. The BMWs were waiting for them. sped off on the tarmac. It was me in the airport.

It was so corrupt at that time. How to pay a bribe to get into the airport? Like, how to pay a bribe if I wanted to enter. He's like, $20. I said, what for? He's like, you enter through me, $20. So when you're young and curious. How old are you?

I was 26, 25 then? 25, 26. So when you're young and curious and adventurous, there's nothing better. Dangerous combination. There's nothing better. Contradist combination, dude. So Georgia was like the gateway drug.

That would be like... Where is Georgia? The Republic of Georgia. So you're south of Russia. Caucasus Mountains. On the Black Sea. Armenia, right below, Azerbaijan. Sort of near Turkey.

Borders Turkey, actually. Okay. So like on the east side, let's say. We're Bulgaria is over here on the western side of Turkey, east side. Okay. But that was the... gateway. And then you're like, where can I go from here? And you look on a map and you're like, huh, Tajikistan, what's that like? And so instead of going back in seven months with the Dukadi,

I scrapped the Dukadi idea, I'm like, ah, I can always save money. But I'll never be able to travel like this again. Maybe never. So I'm going to go all the way around. And it was 50 countries, two years. Ran out of money in Uzbekistan. Great place to run out of money. I imagine. Yeah, I got cash advances on my credit card for like 25% interest. And it was the best debt I ever got it because it was like, here's my moment. And at that age, you sleep anywhere in anything. Were you filming any of this? Were you making? No. No. So I did. I imagine if you'd had the GoPro back then. Really shit. You know, I'm glad I didn't because I got to see the world without thinking about making content. Because I mean, you know what makes. making content is it's it's not all fun in games it's work you have to get the story yeah and i was totally free at that time just to let my imagination go wild so that's what kicked off the international interest but back to austin i'm working as uh fleming steakhouse dreaming of seeing the world and it was here i'm looking down from my hotel i'm like that's the place i used to work it's

closed down now and i'm like wow how you don't feel who i think steve jobs said it best i'm not not going to say it as well as him, but he said, like, you can never, you can never see it going forward, connect the dots where your life's going, but you can look back and connect the dots. Only makes sense and rubber. Yeah, life has to be lived forward, but only makes sense and rubles. Right. And so that was one of these big moments where I'm like, wow, if my younger self at 21,

serving the porterhouse steak, which I still remember, the tenderness of the flight, no, the favor of the flay, no, the tenderness of the flay. but the flavor of the rib eye, the porter house. That's how you sold it. That's what you need. I sold it better, but I can't believe I was still in my brain because my manager was banging us over and over and over again. But if I could have seen then waiting tables where I was this morning,

well, just a half hour ago, in that hotel and where my life went, wow. So it was just curiosity, a dream, a lot of luck, a lot of hard work. What do you think that young version of you would think, if you were able to show him where his life went from there? It would be way more than I could have imagined. Yeah. Beautiful. Because the world's an amazing place.

And living abroad teaches you as you're living abroad. I don't know if you consider this as your home country now. I'm kind of unsure on that, to be honest. I did. I was telling you I did a little bit of, self-work before the meditation retreat a few weeks ago. And as a part of that, one of the questions that came up is,

where is your home? And I found myself really conflicted when trying to answer it. Right. Because I kind of don't know. I kind of don't know where home is. Here, this is where my business is, and it's a country that I love,

and I certainly feel welcome here in a way that I wasn't in the UK, but I'm definitely not fucking American, right? the second that I opened my mouth, I'm evidently not American. I don't have the same cultural landmarks and understandings and historical context that you need to kind of be able to survive.

Something that's really interesting, I wonder whether you've noticed this. People who immigrate to other countries that speak the same language that they do natively, their foreignness or the fact that they're an immigrant gets forgotten, and then it resurfaces itself in surprising ways. So if I go to Brazil, even if you're speaking English with someone, their accent is so evidently, like, perverted that you're always reminded of the fact that you're a foreigner.

Always reminded over and over and over again. But you go to a country that speaks your native language and you kind of forget for a little while that you're not from there because it's just seamless communication. and then you try to use a reference. I try to talk about Jaffa Cakes or Cadbury's milk chocolate or the in-betweeners or fucking, you know, Mr. Bean or whatever. And which obviously those are the four horsemen of British culture. Yeah, sure. And then you go, I can't do that. I can't do that.

I forget that I'm a foreigner. You forget that you're a foreigner in a country that speaks your own language. And it's really, it's good because it allows you to integrate very quickly. And you don't feel as alienated, I imagine, as you might do if you weren't speaking a language, but then the alienation sort of jump scares you. Yeah. It creeps up on you every so often,

hits you and you weren't really expecting it. And that's something that I've noticed since I've been here that I think if you're in a country that didn't speak your native language, you would be very regularly reminded of that. And you would probably give yourself a bit more grace of, hey, if you're feeling a little alienated every so often, that makes sense. Yeah.

But then you come here and you're like, well, what are you whining about? Everyone fucking speaks the same. language, you've got your O-1 visa, you've got the bank accounts, you've got the health insurance, what are you complaining about? You go, I get that, but you're still culturally displaced. Yeah, you are still socially an alien here. Don't you feel that when you live abroad, you learn more about your home country than being at home? Dude, that's what the world taught me. That's a George Mack line as well. He says the exact same thing. He moved to Dubai, learned more about

the UK, being in Dubai than he'd ever learned being in the UK. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought, My goal was to show the world that, look, most people have an idea of the UK or France or Italy. When you get on the ground, things are always more complicated, nuanced and more granular. But I wanted to show the Republic of Georgia. I wanted to show Syria, these places that only get negativity in the press. That was the goal. That's how this all started. Show Americans the world they don't know.

You know how many Americans went on a single flight last year? Less than half of Americans got on a plane in 2025. 45% of Americans got on a plane, 55% of Americans didn't. And I think it's some insane number don't even have a passport. I don't know the percentage. So I used to be a little harsher on that.

But what I realize in my work now, most people, two weeks of vacation. That's Christmas, that's Thanksgiving. That's family. You've got obligations. Like, realistically, we didn't travel growing up in my family. Going to Europe takes time, takes money. So I get it for a lot of people.

Me personally, or you, you're curious. You want to see what's out there. And I think it's more possible than most people think, especially when you're younger. Like, your choice, my dad was in a profession where you're getting two, here, he's not seeing the world. So I'm not going to do that profession if I want to see the world. It's pretty easy. You can sort of line things up and be like, if I go that direction, I'm not going to do what I want to do the most. Okay, don't go that direction.

What are some of the lesser known but amazing destinations that you think people should go to if they're looking to travel outside of the U.S.? Like a surprising great trip? Are you going to tell me that Syria is like a hotbed for a weekend getaway? Jared, can we go to the, we made a special setting. So I know that you sometimes go to some dark and mysterious places on your travels. So we can change the vibe inside of the studio. And we've made a setting. You're going to be the first person that we use this new one on.

You can put some dark music with me? I think just the darkness of the stories will probably do enough. Okay, would I say for anyone to pack up and go to Syria first trip abroad? No, definitely not. When I went was Christmas time. I flew in from Moscow, two in the morning. and it was all the lights, the green lights from above, and those were all the mosques.

And I got in the cabby, and this was during George W. Bush, and the cabby was like, the driver was like, what do you think of George W. Bush? And I was against the Iraqi war. And I just knocked off some pejoratives, and he loved it. He was like, ah, I was like, FGW, blah, blah. Well, I'm in Texas, so I'm going to have problems with saying that.

he he was getting excited and all giddy and then I'm like what do you think of bashorel Assad and his giddiness firmed up he got tense he's like bashorel Assad is a good president but it he didn't feel that way and that was the first time I really realized how important free speech is how if you can't speak your mind then it controls your behavior I saw him tense up and I was like here I am in the Middle East saying whatever I want and this guy's at home and is worried even in his own car that this is going to be a problem. So Damascus, Christmas time, Santa Claus is everywhere. Who would have thought?

There's a Christian population there. Old Damascus. Met great people, stayed with locals in their homes. But for Americans getting abroad, I would say you want something that's culturally very different, but still easy to travel. Istanbul, Turkey. That's a good middle road. If you want full-on user-friendly, go to where you're from, right?

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Seamless integration. It's easy. Did you see, I saw this news article earlier on, an LGBT cruise set off from the U.S. trying to land in Turkey. And they wanted to experience Turkey. It's a cruise of like, there's a lot of fruit going on. It's high levels of fruit on this, on the cruise.

They look like all of the guys look like they're having an amazing time. I'm sure it's really great. But they arrive to Turkey. They were like, you're not coming. Like you're not, you're not, you're not, you're not coming here. So I guess there is a little caveat which is make sure that your sexuality aligns with the local customs. Yeah, I love the Middle East.

Traveling there has been great, very hospitable with people. But, hey, culture is different. Don't fuck a dude while you're there. Yeah, I wasn't going to, but yeah, definitely don't. Very important. Yeah. That's not going to go over well. Yep.

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All right, so you do this huge trip around the world. Yep. And then realize that America, home country, is this place that you understand maybe the least? Yeah, there are quite a few trips. That was the big one. It came back at 26. And I just changed my whole perspective on everything. And fast forward quite a bit until 38, what is it?

40? No, 42. Living in Ukraine, lived there for four years, my wife's Ukrainian. Okay. Pandemic brought us back because I shot roughly 50 videos in Ukraine, pretty much tapped out. Pre-war? Pre-war. Wow.

Yeah, I got some, that's where it all started, actually. Tell me about that. I started in the countryside. I was in, I'll give you a little, just a little context to it. I tried to pitch a travel TV show in 2011-12 to all the networks in L.A. I was flying there every six weeks trying to pitch. I made a teaser reel. Hey guys, so I want to show Americans the world.

Here's the concept. We're going to hang out with locals. We're going to get into their stories. And the response was, like, who are you? And wait, what's the rising action in that? And what? No. Door closed, door closed, door closed for about a half year.

So I gave up on the whole travel concept because this was, YouTube was a thing, but to make your life off. YouTube. I didn't, very few people were doing it. I didn't see it at that time. So I went on different ventures. I had a business that, a small business that pretty much paid my bills, but I was always trying for something more interesting, something I love. So I developed this app that connected people through common interests. So you're going to Germany. You love running. Date activity connects you with that person at that time. Who doesn't like to hang out with people that have similar interests?

just way over my skis. I was living in San Francisco. I was pitching that, pitching that, wasn't working. So around 38, I'm sitting in Golden Gate Park trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life. No clue. I'm like, I have to do something that's interesting and meaningful. I have my business limping me along. It's nothing I really want to be part of, but I have to do it to pay the bills. I'm reading books about philosophy and just, business and trying to come up with something, my buddy moves to Ukraine. He had a dev team over there. He had a startup. I went and visited it. He's like, dude, why don't you just stay right now? And subleted in my apartment in San Francisco and moved over to Ukraine. And so the first stories

started when I was in Ukraine. I had a Turkish buddy say, hey man, you want to learn the language. Go to the countryside. And so I went out to the far reaches of Ukraine. which where I was is de facto Russia now. And live with this family whose apartment got bombed out in the far east of the country. They moved to the countryside had zeroed nothing, nothing materially. Six weeks there, six videos. We even dug a well by hand.

Transformative experience. I mean, I was sleeping on a mattress straight out of the Romanov dynasty, Springs going through my back. It was a, do you open the window at night and get the room down to 88 degrees and smell the neighbor's trash burning? Or you close it and have a room at 94 and smell less trash. Okay, so very primitive conditions. But the Ukrainians loved it.

They ate it up because I was doing things like selling corn on the beaches in Burdansk, because kukuruza, they say, they call it. People sell corn on the beach. I was walking around. And there's a corn mafia there that controls the beach. I know exactly what. If this podcast thing goes to shit, I'm becoming part of the Ukrainian corn mafia. You should.

The Cuckarooza Mafiosa was all over my schick. Wow. And they ran me off that beach. Just gringo selling. Yeah, but we made a video of it and the Ukrainians loved it. Right, cool. So you got big in Ukraine. Got big.

I got Ukraine famous. I was on all the television. I got Ukraine famous. I was all over TV and I was like, no way. Yeah. This thing can actually work. And then I went to Iran and I had free range in Iran. Wow, you really managed to front run all of the biggest kinetic flashpoints.

Yeah. You just got there. You were like the trends. Have you considered that you might be the harbinger of like international incidents? It's wherever Peter Sandinello's been. You've right. They should just lock me down here. You didn't stay in the Gaza Strip for a while.

Did you? I put some time. I didn't go into Gaza. I went to West Bank. Right. Okay. You've been up. Okay.

So you go to Iran. So I go to Iran, shoot that series. Now, I, Americans need a government-minded tour. They need to be with someone the whole time. And they're going to be on that tour with the person. They don't have free range. But Italian, I have an Italian passport. As an Italian, I could go over.

I'm not, I don't claim Italian at all. It's just through family. But I could use this document and get free range in the country. So that was novel. An American getting free range of the country, and I made a series there. And that did well. Then I went to Saudi right after it opened, like right after it opened. But then there were failures.

I went back to Ukraine, and I had failures because here is the deal. Ukrainians loved Ukrainian content. Ukrainians didn't care about Iranian content. So I just lost my whole audience. You were audience captured by Ukraine. And then I was audience captured by Iran and then Saudi. Right. Really. It really is the algorithm coming to life here. Totally. And so I would get all these new audiences and new countries, but there was no thread between them, right? And I didn't have a big U.S. audience at that time. Anyways, did that for a while. Pandemic hits. Where are we going to go? We're either going to move to Italy, but Italy was really locked out of you. Have you met your missus yet? Your wife?

Yeah, yeah. We were together like three out of my four years there. Okay. But did you meet her when you were in Ukraine? when you were part of the fighting with the corn mafia. On one hand, chatting up the Ukraine future Mrs. Santinello and on the other hand, ensuring you don't get killed by the corn mafia. Pre-Kookerosa mafioso, I'm like, I'm off to the countryside living with this family. She thought it was a bit bizarre. And so did the rest of the Ukrainians, because it was so fringe. In the cities, they would never live like that.

So here's this Yank guy. They're not too dissimilar to the U.S. then, right? you've already set a little bit of that tone of cosmopolitan life, although this country might be weird from the country that I'm from. Yeah. In most countries, the modernity cosmopolist thing still looks at going to the countryside as kind of what the fuck are you doing?

Like this is going backward in time somehow. Yeah, but the delta is even greater there because I'm going really primitive. Yep. And then what the pandemic brought us back to the U.S. And then when we got back to the U.S., I'm like, what are we going to do here? I know my country from here. What's interesting about the U.S.?

Six years later, head's still down, going full speed. It took off. Americans loved it. And I had, I mean, from a, like, career standpoint, having American viewers versus Belarusian or Ukrainian, different game would actually you can make some money, on YouTube to actually carry the thing forward. You're telling me that there isn't a burgeoning e-com and CPG business in Iran?

I can't get my Shopify store to deliver Newtonic to Iran. No. Well, it's all internal there. They're big enough where they have every industry pretty much working on its own, for the most part. Apart from the nuclear one, yeah. Apart from... So, yeah, then the U.S. content ripped off. And I remember being at home.

My mom still lives in Vermont. I grew up in Vermont. moved out at 18. But I went back to where I grew up, and I told my buddy, my good buddy from youth, I'm like, hey, I'm going to go to New York City, shoot some videos with the Hasidic Jews, and then go to the hoods and the projects

and show that world. He's like, cool, but what are you going to do for work? And that was when it was like the money, the runway wasn't that long. My business blew up. Got to make this work. Got to make this in right when I needed it to work. It worked.

So it's been six years nonstop and all of those videos have I try to go wide as far as I can from the Amish to the Bloods and Crips and everything in between. What do you think most Americans don't understand about America? Yeah, it doesn't sound really groundbreaking what I'm going to say, but just the scale and the amount of different lifestyles we have. you do have parts of America where they're still hunting of a whale, whales every year, reindeer. You can see Russia. I'm talking about St. Lawrence Island, Siberian, you pick people, three times the size of Maui. America still... Where is that?

Yeah. Way up in Alaska. So huge that as someone doing this full time, I'm still discovering places I knew nothing about, didn't know they existed. So I found that with Google Maps late night. And I'm like, what's that eye? You're fucking kidding me. You geogessed your way. I totally.

Just zoom it, pinch and zoom. In, zoom in. Okay, two towns. There's USPS and a church. There's no street view. What's going on up there? I'll check that out. And then you have Miami's in the same country.

Capital of Latin America. Two different universes. So we're all in our bubbles. Doesn't matter where you live. We're in our bubbles. My goal is to teach or show Americans about different bubbles. that they might not interact with. That could be inner city hoods.

That could be the richest hoods. That could be deep with the Amish, native culture. We have 576 federally recognized tribes in this country, and they're all different. That's like a whole different parallel universe, a whole different world running on its own. You have everything from Navajo Nation in Arizona,

size of New Jersey, size of Israel, basically. It's different laws. different rules. Just like Israel, yeah. Just like Israel. And then you have Cherokee in North Carolina. You put kids from each one of those tribes in swap them. It's like a wild cultural experience for them.

Native American world is like European countries. You can't just say you're European, yes. But you're not Italian. You're not Norwegian. You got some Viking and you may be. Okay. But you get what I'm saying, right? Every country has, and that's how the native world is.

It's like different countries. They're all native. They're all like just like Europeans. They're all European. But Ukraine and the UK are two different universes. So that's been surprising. Just the amount of depth we have here and how granular it goes when you really look at it closely. Talk to me about the native peoples that you've spent time with.

Because coming over here, I've really enjoyed immersing myself in. going to different places. I've taken a lot of big road trips. But I've not done anything like what you've done. I've gone from New Orleans. It's so interesting. The French quarter downtown. Oh my God, I can get a bignet and spill it everywhere.

I'm like, okay, come on, dude. Like, what have you learned from the native tribes and the descendants of them that you've spent time with? They're all different, but there's a thread that you've, they're all different, but there's, There's a similarity as in, you get in a native world, the stories get more interesting, the pace slows down. You get a bit away from the capitalistic drum of the Western world. That would be my initial feeling. They're wonderful storytellers. They can almost put you like in the Siberian Yupik.

I was with this woman, Adora. It's like she put me in a trance. She was like hypnotizing me with her. stories. They have an ability to deliver a story and they have a great sense of humor and they all play hoops. Hoops is the basketball. That's what keeps them together. All the tribes play hoops. It's big rivalry. What's their relationship or story like with what America is and has become now? Because you could imagine there's maybe some ancestral resentment in there. Do you ever sense that? Is that something that comes through? Depends who you talk to. So the highest enrollment in the military per capita

is Native American. No fucking way. Yeah. So you have true patriots, flags waving. You have some that believe in traditional beliefs. Other very Christian. You have some that are traditional beliefs be more like animal spirit type stuff. Exactly. In getting really deep into their clans. They have different clans. There's clan culture. You have place is like in Navajo Nation, you get into the Hogan into the hut and you got to walk clockwise in the hut. Never, ever go counterclockwise. It's going to bring so much bad to you. So if you drop your keys here, like for those listening, so to my- fucking navigate. To my right, like don't just pick them up there, like circle the whole thing

and pick them up. I find that stuff fascinating. But no, everyone, there's no consensus. I would say. So sometimes people will say, hey, they're not Indians. They're natives or Native Americans or Native Americans or Indigenous or First Nations. You know what they say they are? The only consensus is there isn't one. Depends who you talk to. Some say, I'm Indian. La Cota Medicine Man in South Dakota Dakota said, I'm the Native American. Because he was way before it was called America, his family. I grew up in America. Before we continue, most people in their 30s are still training hard. Their protein is dialed in. They sleep better than they did in their 20s. Discipline is not the issue, but recovery feels somewhat different. Strength gains take a little longer. The margin for errors starts to shrink. And that is why I'm such a huge fan of timeline. You see, mitochondria are the energy producers inside of your muscle cells. As they weaken with age, your ability to generate power and recover effectively changes, even if your habits stay strong. Miterpure from timeline contains the only clinically validated form of urethaline

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free shipping in the US and they ship internationally. And right now, you can get up to 20% off by going to the link in the description below or heading to timeline.com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's timeline.com slash modern wisdom. And modern wisdom at checkout. Is there vestigial resentment? There's some. I mean, there's some that go back to the certain battles like wounded knee.

What was it? 300 and something died? I think it was Custer's Army, took out the Lakota, I believe it was. And that really affected the guy I was hanging out with. It was back in the 1800s. And then some people are like Vietnamese, as in they let it go really quickly. You go to Vietnam these days. You'd think they would hate all Americans, they don't.

He's watching a war flick with a bunch of Vietnamese dude. American war flick, how crazy was that? Just really depends. And then economically, some tribes are really poor. I mean, the de facto is it's worse on the res materially economically than off the res. It's worse on the res? Yeah. Why?

Just less jobs, remote areas, not as much industry. But then some res is, it's wealthy as all could be. Great gambling. You go to the Seminoles in South Florida. They own the hard rock brand worldwide. I think they paid 800 million for it back in the day. Hang on. Yeah.

The hard rock brand. Worldwide. Is owned. By the Seminels. By some indigenous Native American descendant people in... 100%. And their tribe, I believe, don't quote me on this. It's roughly 4,500 people.

They started Indian gaming. They have agricultural operations. I believe gas and oil operations. Hard Rock Cafe So these guys are just hardcore entrepreneurs Hardcore entrepreneurs And

You know what I get into these communities I always want people in my videos To want to be on my videos I don't want to just show up on a camera Put a camera in someone face if they don't want it A tribal council member I put up on my insta I said I want to get a Seminole story

I know it was very difficult to get with them and tribal council member reached out, said, I'm a council member, I can show you, should watch my content. So I went there, we're talking gates, we're talking background checks with IDs and everything. I'm in the nerve center, the offices. You went to the Pentagon of the indigenous people.

Totally. Right. And I'm like, this is the most buy-the-book thing I've ever done with video making. I'm like totally official here. I actually feel like press. Yeah, I've got credentials. Yeah, it's like I'm, doing all the right things.

This woman takes me out. We show the tribe, we show the world. It was very much a North Korean tour, as in everything, just showed the good for the most part. And I got a call from their attorney right after that thing posted. They wanted that down immediately. He said something along the lines of, are you familiar with the case we just closed with Wells Fargo?

I believe I forget how much they won. It was another, it was like something like 800 million or something. And I'm like, no, but congratulations on that. He's like, well, we're going to need that video. That's a little bit of a flex. It's the equivalent of North Korea showing their ballistic missiles on a parade. Total flex. And my law team wasn't going to fight with theirs because, you know, I have one person that I can call that's not going to deal with those.

And they've got machetes. No, they have, they've got Tomahawks. They have billions of dollars. Yeah. And Tomah hopes. And those things. So what I'm saying is it's so widely varied. You can go to Pine Ridge.

It's the poorest native res in the country where it looks poor and it looks rough. And then you have on the other end of the spectrum, the Seminoles who are fantastic capitalist that figured out the game really well. And I believe, and I don't know exactly the number, but it's like $128,000 per kid every year. what? The revenue that they're distributing? Yeah, so they come out of high school all millionaires. Now, I don't know the, I don't want to get myself in trouble on the exact number because it changes hard information to get.

But there's that end of the spectrum and then there's the other end of the spectrum. So that's my point about America. The more you go deep, the more you go granular, it's complicated. and there's so much rad stuff here, you really don't know what's going on because you're busy in your own life, we all are, doing your own thing, and it gives a lifetime of discovery.

It's crazy that, you know, it's easy to... Can you chat GPT? How many Americans have got a passport for me, Jared? I'm pretty sure it's like only 60% of Americans have got a passport. 60? Yeah, I think so. And it's easy, as you said before. You can be judgmental about that.

Think about how big the world is and by virtue of being unable or unwilling to get the credentials to be able to travel, you can't travel. But without leaving the country, you guys have got more than 50 countries inside of here. But half of Americans have a valid passport. State Department estimated 51%, 170 million people in late 2024. Yeah. That is fucking insane. You got to think, though, half the population does not have the money to go anywhere.

Or the time, even if you had some of the money, the time that you would need to take off in order to be able to travel without your obligations for Thanksgiving and Christmas and all that. But, yeah, it makes total sense. I don't get. I do. I do. I do. I'm a big proponent of travel for sure. But you don't actually need to leave the country. In a way, yes and no. Like you can constantly learn and discover and every state has its own identity. Being in Texas this time, it's like, it's like its own country. For sure. The big states in America, California, New York, Texas, Florida.

with big populations, they have their own gravity to them, right? Yeah. What's the poorest place that you visited in America? Technically, well, I would say two regions really stand out for talking wide regions. Central Appalachia, so that's like West Virginia area, eastern Kentucky. It's out there. You've got to check that out. Great people, but poor.

Mississippi Delta would be the other big region. those two sort of left behind you don't know U.S. cultural context you were saying I think it's changing a little but back in the day any any the butt of any joke would be like the West Virginia hillbilly right looked out upon you know with Hollywood it's where a lot of the coal it's where a lot of the industry the coal came from to build this country and you have those regions in in the UK too we do but you don't have the room the thing that's fascinating watching your videos is just how much fucking space there is. Yeah.

You know, when you talk about forgotten areas, lost towns, I don't know how much can be forgotten in a place that's got 10 times the population density of the US, right? We've got 50 million people-ish, 50, 60 million people versus 330, 330 or whatever's over here.

But the land mass is so much smaller than the amount of people are smaller. It's 10 times denser. So everyone's on top of it. other. You don't drive for that long unless you're really looking for it. Yeah. You don't drive for that long without seeing something that looks like a hub. On the road trips that I've done around America, it is fucking barren for a huge periods of time. Yeah. And then there's some farm that comes past or just some like caravan park, mobile home we would call it in the UK,

with shit tons of trucks, like there's a random tractor there. Some guys got a bike that's just in parts, and then it just leaves, and then something else comes up. So, yeah, forgotten towns, I think the opportunity for that to happen in America is much higher because you don't just have

this sort of stumbling effect. You really can be incredibly detached, and detachment would lead to alienation, and then that's going to really start to, drive down your ability to earn to be integrated with the rest of the country. Yeah, good point. Out there in Appalachia, I mean, there are coal jobs now, not as many as there were, but a lot of young people don't want to get into that, understandably so.

You think about those guys, the inner city kid, like living in the hood, the projects, has way more, okay, in theory, way more chance to tap into an economy just because it's literally six subway stops away. Now you're going to have to pull up your pants, you're going to have to work hard, you're going to have to like get the skills, but that opportunity is there

where the kid out in the middle of Appalachia, there's no real opportunity around to go get. What are people doing in these places in Appalachian? What do they do for work? there's a lot of drugs, unfortunately. Selling drugs. Using drugs, selling drugs,

the Fulmonte. Yep. I find it to be really extreme as in people are either working really hard and doing well for themselves, carrying along, or deep in the poverty in the drugs. And so when,

do you know of the Sackler family? Oh, yeah. The pill mills? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I've watched a million documentaries. So OxyCon. That was sort of the testing round because all of these coal miners, it's hard work. It'd be in a lot of pain.

I met up with a fourth generation coal miner. He said he was one of the first one put on that medication on that drug. And it's highly addictive. And then when the jobs left town, a lot of them, well, the addiction became that much greater because your life's looking terrible and this thing feels great. It's not just the physical pain. Psychic pain. You're trying to train as well now.

So there's still fallout of that. Now it got better with that. And then fentanyl hit pretty hard around five, six years ago. The Chinese OxyContin. Yeah, exactly. So I like to highlight the problems in this country. We have plenty of them. The good, the bad, the ugly, though.

A lot of positive stuff. I don't just go for the heavy. I don't just want to go for the crime. I'm in the drugs. Now, these things need to be brought to the surface, but I want someone to see my YouTube channel, look at all the videos on it and be like, oh, that's, that America place, that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's got its issues.

I don't want to be online just being like full dopamine-driven rage bait where they look at it and it's like, that's awful. There is a kind of tragedy porn that, you know, what's that area in Philly? that's got... Kensington. Kensington. And, you know, if you want to do a two million play vlog, you just go to Kensington and interview some people about how the legs falling off

and no one really cares. And I used this needle five times last week and everything's horrible. So Kensington, I wasn't going to shoot a Kensington story. Because it's been done so many times. Too trite. Yeah, I want to be on the front edge of things. I want to be able to see Russia. Yes.

If I can't see Russia, it doesn't count. Exactly. Yeah. So, but there's this guy, his name was Buddy. His name's Buddy. He's bringing kids off the street. He's got a boxing clinic and religious rehab. And he's doing something good trying to change it.

So, okay, I want that story now because here's a big problem. Here's somewhat of a solution. Let's show that, like give a little hope in the thing. So I did that story two years ago. I can honestly say after being in the, hoods of Karachi Pakistan, in the slums of India, there's nowhere more disheartening than Kensington. No way. Fact. Because it is the on the fentanyl, on the trank, face down in the curb, and we're just

going to let this go. Yeah, so it's more disheartening because of the prevalence of drugs, and that's the sort of hopelessness? Not necessarily. It's the way we're dealing with it. So for me, compassion would be, hey, that guy's deep in on Fent. He's not looking good. He's bleeding. There's a wound.

Like, we got it. We got to change it. We got to get, if I had the power, I'd be like, that guy needs to be brought off the street. Even if he doesn't want to go, the best thing for him would be go into rehab of some sort, a therapy. Nobody gets on Fent because their life is great. Oh, I had a great day today.

I'll go do some fent, right? It's because things are terrible. I mean, it is a Friday. You want to do some? Yeah, fuck it. Let's go to 6th Street and get some fent, dude. I sure it feels great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Until your leg falls off. But until you're on, and then you're on Kensington, and it's not so great. Most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance, which is why, for the last five years, I've started pretty much every morning with Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. This orange salt in a cold glass of water is like a sweet, salty, orangey nectar, and I really tell the difference when I take it versus when I don't. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue, helps to optimize brain health and regulate your appetite while also curbing cravings. Best of all, they have no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration so you can buy it and try it for as long as you want.

And if you don't like it for any reason, they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of elements most popular flavors with your first purchase. We're going to the link in the description below. Are heading to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. Here's the breakdown in the system. In many of these places, Skid Row in L.A., the housing is there.

But I've done videos there too. And a lot of these people, they like the adventure of the streets. they don't want to go into housing and not be on drugs or play by the rules. So we're at this weird point in different jurisdictions depending where you're at, where it's like, if they can stay on the streets and no one can remove them,

then it just, the problem gets worse. And so that's also with the ACLU, you know, freedom in America, right? I'm free to choose how I want to live my life and how I want to be. and the law when it's not when it's written up differently in different places or not enforced doesn't allow for the system to really remedy the problem is fentanyl the biggest drug problem in America in your experience yes trank's pretty ugly too but i'd say fentanyl and meth are the worst

but trank if the distribution can get there will maybe be as bad or worse trank is awful because they'll get wounds. I was in Kensington. Some guy was on Trank. He had wounds and there was just like, they were like flies festering on the wounds. People kind of decomposing while down life. Yeah.

So that's what I mean while it's poorer in India, for sure, it's poor in Pakistan. Like we have resources here. But it's just the lack of humanity. Now there are people like Buddy trying to help. But it's this hiccup where nobody can really solve the problem.

Then there's harm reduction, which is bring needles out because the theory behind that is give someone a fresh needle. They're not reusing and spreading disease. And I'd say on the argument for harm reduction from the people, it's really impossible to get in with them. I've tried. The argument is, hey, if we have someone coming into our facility using clean needles, then maybe we can get them into rehab. Maybe we can sell the rehab on them. but there is a homeless industrial complex in the country. There are a lot of people making a lot of money.

Who's making money off homeless people? Oh, okay. So there's a lot of housing involved with building out housing. How is the housing involved in homeless people? Yeah, isn't it? Well, they're building. What do you mean? They're building in L.A. on Skid Row.

Is this the fucking Bass Pro shop selling tents? Like, what is this? They give out tents. There's some, there's some grift. Okay. Okay, there'll be money to give out tents. but that there is housing that is very expensive housing

in Los Angeles built for homeless people. Okay. It's a little bit of an oxymoron, but go on. It is, yeah. So there's that craft. There's a lot of NGOs that get money from different organizations, from the state, from the feds to sort of remedy the problem

and the problem's not necessarily being remedied. I mean, I saw living in San Francisco. The tenderloin has always been bad. Have you ever been there? I'm not selling you on America, Chris, am I? We're going on how my channel's not all dark, and I just keep going into the drug store.

That's okay. That's okay. I mean, dude, I mean, I've walked through SF. When did we do Naval last March? And that was the first time. I'd been to SF for Michaela Peterson's wedding, and then I hadn't seen the city at all. And then I went to go and do the Naval episode,

and we were walking through the financial district. There's this huge fuck-off equinox. Equinox. Yeah. And it's an old bank. You've got these crazy steps up to the front of it. We wanted to get a training session in before we were going to go and film. And it was closed on a fucking Saturday.

It is so driven. The cosmopolis in the middle of SF is so driven by this group of people that do the nine to five or the nine to nine or whatever that it's closed on a weekend. And we thought, well, there's another one two miles away. I'm good to get a walk in. I want to walk. I want to see the city. And as you walk from one equinox to another, you just very quickly see the financial district fall away and the human feces begin.

And it's so, to me, that it's how stark it is. And this seems to be one of the sort of through lines. I know you did this thing in the Hamptons, which I thought was fucking fascinating. it's not just across the country how big the inequality can be. Yeah. It's within very small spaces. It's when you walk three blocks difference and it feels like you're in a different city. Yeah.

To be fair, San Francisco has gotten better. We left in 21, my wife and I. It's gotten better since their new mayor, new DA. It's cleaned up a bit. Things are always changing. But yeah, to me, it's unacceptable. That's why I try to highlight these socioeconomic differences too, like what you're saying. Not to do the tragedy porn thing, but say, hey, this is what we can fix.

Yeah, and it's not necessarily a solution I'm offering is just showing. The book, I don't, can I talk about the book? Dude, why should people go to read this amazing fucking memoir that you put together? Okay, your fellow Americans, and I'm going to put you in that basket, Chris, is that cool? Perfectly. I'll cut, because you've embraced the country, the country. countries embraced you. Driver Camaro.

You do? Yeah. Oh, nice. 80s? Oh, no, new one. Scumbag. Sorry. Okay.

No, scumbag is 80s. Oh, okay. Fair enough. Doing burnout. Yeah, I'm elevated hic, I think. Okay. So it's a lot of the content from the channel. A lot of the backstory.

So much happens when the power button's off. In Amish country, shooting a series, like everything, it's nuanced. It's complicated. The Amish have the Schwartz and Troopers, which are the most conservative. You'd think of the Schwartz and troopers when you think of Amish, no phone, no electricity. It has the Beechy. Those would be the most liberal. They drive around, okay?

What makes them Amish? Yeah, and you don't really get a plaque or anything. I guess you just say, I'm Amish and you play the game as in, have you seen how they cut their beards? Yes. Right? Yes. Like, you wouldn't be able to be Amish looking at the game. like you're looking or me like I'm looking.

Okay. Be unacceptable. Yep. But you're part of the church. You're part of the Amish church. You live by their ways. But you also have some technology. Depending on the type of Amish.

Yeah. Okay. So in the book, stuff like the cat, I'm in an Airbnb in the countryside, Amish country, cats are meowing outside. I don't know why there are cats outside, but I go out to feed them. Door closes behind. I'm in my underwear. sun's coming up, go to open the door. Oh, shoot, my phone's inside. Code is on my phone. I got to shoot a video. I hear the hooves coming down the road, the steel wheels of the carriages. The Amish were coming. The Amish were coming. And I'm in my underwear. Like one of those dudes with a metallic blanket, you know, I'm reflecting pasty white to the world. And so there are two questions in my head. I mean, there's there's two ways to go about this.

I walk to the most conservative Amish people's house, the Schwartz and troubers, in my underwear, bald, naked, pretty much, you know, pass their kids and say, hey, can you help me get into this house? Or I got to break through the window of the house where I'm staying. And so I throw a big rock through the window. Why?

You would too. Why? Are they scary? Just think, I mean, you're a ripped good, good looking guy, but even you showing up to an Amish home, some of the most conservative people. You think you get shocked? What would happen? No, they wouldn't shoot you.

It would just go wrong, I think. I don't think it would go well. Okay. He's so out there. I imagine news doesn't travel that fast in the Amish world, though. It does. Okay. They're like aspen trees.

They're all connected. Okay. Seriously. They know what's going on. They're more connected than we are. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Faster than the internet.

So call the people obviously, hey, sorry, I broke your window, I'll replace it and whatnot. There's a lot of that stuff behind the scenes of video making, which when the cameras are off, the thoughts that come through, what I've learned on the journey, and also how I started into this after high school, taking a road trip across the country. And a lot of historical context in there. And just an overall pro got it. We're in difficult times. a lot of doom and gloom.

You can get that all day long on the internet or turn on the TV. Here's a space to go, that being the book or the audiobook. You can open up 10 separate chapters, easy to read, they're all separate on their own, and smile about America

and learn something and connect with your fellow Americans. So the publisher reached out because they saw the channel and they're like, do you want to do something off your channel? they're thinking to zag while everyone is zgging right now. There's a lot of heaviness, a lot of doom and gloom in the country. Just think of the Western world overall.

Maybe all the world. I don't know. They're trying to think front lines, hey, how can we go the opposite direction here? And that's what my book is. Nice, wholesome. Yeah, I'd like to think. So I get in a little heaviness, but not too bad. It's mostly uplifting, positive.

Give me some more stories about the Amish. Okay, here's one for you. You like this, being English, I'm English too in the Amish world. Everyone here is English. Okay. Anyone that's not Amish is English? 100%. Including the Japanese?

Black, Japanese. Brilliant. Female. You're English. Oh, that's fantastic. You're not them, you're English. Dude, and they said that the imperial colony had died. No.

We're still going strong in the Amish. Go fuck yourself. So you're English, I'm English. Yes. And Italian, apparently. Old Order Amish. can't drive. But they're out in the countryside.

They need rides really bad. Okay? So I meet this guy, his name's Marcus. I'm like, Marcus, I'm making videos. And he's like, hey, I can bring you into my buddies, my old geyser buddies, playing shuffleboard in an Amish barn, out in the sticks. I'm like, man, that's going to be cool. I got to drive an hour to Marcus.

It's another 45 minutes to his buddies. I go to Marcus's place, pick him up. Oh, howdy, Peter? How are you doing? Oh, hang on. So he's okay to get in a car, but not to drive a car. He can't drive. He needs English to drive.

This is English, English, you have to drive. So this is like Shabbat a little bit for Jewish people. It's like we can't turn on or off the light. But if we got somebody else that can turn the light on or off. Which I did a video on that too. I got in Shabbat. But okay, so pick Marcus up. About halfway through the drive, I'm thinking,

create time to start the video. Rolling Hills, Holmes County, Ohio, beautiful. Marcus is a character. I bring out the camera. I'm like, he's like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm just going to start the video. He's like, uh, I don't, no, let's not do that right now. So I'm reading the room. Okay, cool. Go to the event with the shuffleboard. Feeling it out with his guys, characters, great scene, a lot of yelling. They're speaking Pennsylvania Dutch. What the fuck is that? Which is their language. It's German. It's like a form of German. Yeah, that's their native language. They call it Dutch, not to do with the Netherlands, but like Deutsch.

Where did that come from? Came from the motherland from Europe. They came to the U.S. to flee religious prosecution. Persecution. And William Penn in Pennsylvania said, hey, come on over. You guys are great with the land. You're great with farming. And they could live to their own tune in America.

There are a lot of carve-outes for them. And that's a part of my book, neither here nor there, people in America, Chicano's, Amish, Siberian Yupik, who are American, but living in their own universes. Okay, so get the event, I'm not feeling the vibe. I got to feel the vibe. And ends up, I don't shoot a video. And then I'm a little bit confused, but whatever, I'm just going with it. Drive Marcus home, 45 minutes, drive back to my place an hour. I tell an Amish guy a couple days later, he's like, oh, yeah. He totally played you. The Amish bum rides from English. And he just roped you in.

He wasn't going to do a video. He finessed you. He was doing no video with you. And I laughed. I thought it was great. You thought that it was on you that you hadn't maybe made everyone feel as comfortable as you should have done,

but the video was never on the table. He was never there. You look at the Amish and you say that's primitive technology, but you just got completely schmoosed by him. Shmoosed. And before the pandemic, I did these videos, like right around the beginning of the pandemic. Oh, no. In the beginning, it was like, everyone was like, oh, the Amish left behind.

They're not keeping up. That would suck to be them. Then the pandemic happens. Everyone was like, I want some of that. They're making their own food, hanging out together in the countryside, not worried about a thing. So the book gets into those stories, just like the videos. What about the intense Jewish communities that you've been to see? Yeah, the Hasidics, and again, they're different sects.

You have the Satmar's would be the most conservative. And then you have the Labavich, which I did a Shabbat dinner with. We had to get approval from the rabbis for me to get in there and shoot that video. The wife shops at Gucci. Okay. So you have Gucci to so conservative, it's like the most Spartan living. homespun. Yeah, in Brooklyn, in like the center of urban America.

So that's fascinating. Look, I think Shabbat's cool. I think Shabbat's cool, is it? I totally respect that. I think it's awesome. We did the guy that does the ads for my show, Sky, one of my best friends, had his bachelor party. It was a couple of years ago.

He decided to do it in Houston. He likes... Asian food, Asian culture, and that was it for the theme for the weekend. We did Shabbat on the Friday evening. I want everyone to kind of be here in the moment. I want everyone phones away. We'll do food. So I'm like, I've never done this before.

I guess it's secular Shabbat, you could call it. It's basically just don't use your fucking phone for Friday evening and we'll eat some food. Food arrives and he'd got two pounds of crawfish. I'm like, that definitely doesn't fucking work. Also, there's 25 of us and you've got two pounds of crawfish. That's like 100 grams of edible food. So immediately I broke Shabbat, got my phone out and ordered pizza for everybody. I don't give a fuck about this thing.

But we did that. And we did a Jeffersonian dinner where you have a single question and you're sort of circling the room. And I can see the allure of it. I really can. An equivalent of a lot of people are doing a digital Sabbath now. Yeah. A Sunday where, okay, I'm just no screens for, you know, nine till nine on a Sunday.

After coming back from a seven-day silent meditation retreat with no screens, having little doses of that, I think, make complete sense. So you can do, regardless of whether you're religious or not or a part of the culture or not, I think that there's a lot of cultural technologies, social technology, that you can take and bring into your own life, why wouldn't you want to, maybe the light switch thing might be a little bit much,

but okay, a period of the week where you don't think about work, a period of the week where you're just being present, a period of the week where you're away from screens, like, who thinks that that's a bad idea? Not right, I'd like to get there. Yeah, yeah. The Appalachia thing, just going back to that,

I was watching a video of you speaking to some kid who had the most insane history knowledge. Yeah, right. Who was that kid? Because he was giving you an entire history lecture about the difference between the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans and how he had beef with the ancient Romans. Yeah.

Because of this slaughter that they'd done in like 404 AD. I'm like, yo, if you're holding on to beef from the fucking like third century. Yeah. That's very impressive. And he was like 16 years old. Yeah, he was on the side of the road. I saw these guys fishing. And that video is actually the best performing video on my channel.

And I almost... 34 million views is no joke. Yeah, and I almost didn't do it. I was like struggling to get it going. But that's one of those videos where I'm like, okay, I got a long road trip. Who I meet up with along the way and what happens with them determines if it's a good video or not.

And you have to put your extroverted feeling out sensing. So I see these kids off the side of the road. Turn over. We get into a conversation. And then he drops that. And he starts singing for me too. And his main point was he wanted to show the country that were at all not just drugs and alcoholics and coal miners. That we have, we have something more in us.

Sophistication as well. Yeah. And you realize, like, labels are simple and stereotyping, they exist for a reason. But you can't judge. I mean, if this work has taught me one thing is to judge less. Like, that guy was a gem. He was just dropping it. I couldn't keep up with them.

I'm like, yeah, that sounds good because I didn't have that historical knowledge. Jared, you ever considered that you might have a drinking problem? I don't consider all that, Chris. Well, you drank an entire case of athletic brewing co last night. But they're non-alcoholic. And that's not a problem? Sorry, man, I just kept chugging way for the regret to creep in. Never happen.

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modern wisdom at checkout. That's athleticbrewing.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom a checkout. Near beer terms and conditions apply athletic brewing company fit for all times. Bottoms up. What was that story in the Apple in company town where some widow lady had to had seven days to remarry or leave or something. Yeah. Well, in company towns, not that long ago, I don't know if it was like this in the UK, but they were paid in Scrip was company money.

So. It's like a special currency that could only be used in company run stores. Exactly. Okay. And for your housing and everything. horrendous way to control the people that are working. Yeah, you're not leaving. Or if you want to leave, your money's useless.

Yeah. So if a wife passed, or so I, a husband passed in the mines, the wife had to bounce out of town or get our kids in the minds immediately. Or else, you're losing everything. Because the company owned all the real estate, and they need workers in that real estate. It's getting perilously close to a type of slavery. Yeah. They're like indentured servitude.

Thousands of these places. Do you know we still have company towns in America? That use the currency thing? Not the currency, but almost everything else. Okay, what is a company town? Company town, company owns the real estate. It provides all the employment. Everything revolves around the company.

So, again, one of those nights I'm looking at Google. Baghdad, Arizona. What? Baghdad, Arizona. Who would have thought? I looked into it. What's this town? Freeport McMoran owns it.

Copper mining. They own all the real estate there. Everyone there works in the mines? Still. Still. Or some ancillary business connected to the mines. And I checked it out. And I'm thinking old company town,

what's it like out there? People are all tied into this thing. I get out there. The average wage was above the average in America. It was 90 grand, I believe. Rent, $350, $3.50, $3 bedroom, two bath.

Yeah. This is looking up. Everything's good at the moment. Yeah. Summer workout facility, pool, daycare for kids. School's great. No crime. Why? If you commit crime in a company time,

you're out. Company's booting you. And so, It's not for me. I don't want to be in that mold necessarily, but I totally get it. In these times, or inflation's kicking up, you know,

more stress, I would say, with like trying to make the bills, childcare, all that. What control is in a company town other than everybody has to work for the company? I'm trying to think about, you know, thing.

Yeah. What are some of the other ways that pressure is applied to the people that are working? Yeah. You get fired you're out, obviously. If you're old, once you retire, you're out of town. Yeah. They're not going to save that space for retiring. For somebody that isn't being economically contributive to this project.

Exactly. Right. I suppose that's interesting. When you think about the fact that being able to be able to be able to, you know, to own your own home now or rent an apartment, as long as you can make payments, you don't have to have any allegiance to anyone, right? You don't have to, it doesn't matter whether you move from Google to Procter and Gamble or from Starbucks to fucking Pradeymanje. All of that's fine. You just, the house is independent. But for almost all of human history,

if you were in some serfdom thing, if you had to have fealty to wherever the lower, the called Barron in the UK, medieval times, you know, if you had lords, if you were playing land registries and shit like that, like it's kind of a economic engine, even if you're living on a farm. Yeah. So, okay, so there's some outhouse on the farm and you look after the pigs, you're the pig guy. And then you stop looking after the pigs. It's like, well, guess what? You're out of the house as well, because your housing was attached to your economic output, not just your capacity to pay. That was all part of a single. So suppose this, you know, historically is not that strange. What feels weird is to now think about having your house and your

social structure, because being kicked out into the house is hard, but losing every friend you've ever had and every person that you've ever known in this probably incredibly insular environment. Yeah. Hey, 65, congratulations. Now, fuck off. None of your friends are going to be able to go with you. And Insular also geographically, these are like... Middle of Noah. Marency is another one, two big ones in Arizona. And people are trying to get in. Because look, the pay is good. They save up money and get real estate out. A lot of the ones that are thinking through it, they do their time and they buy real estate outside and retire

in that. Okay. Desert Arizona. It wouldn't surprise me if people are innovative and if there are is this understanding that you work in this place, and then when you retire, you're going to get kicked out, that will begin to be a pathway conveyor belt. Why don't we make a retirees town that's not too far away, and this has all of the things that we want, and then that begins to be the kind of tradition that people go through.

Yeah, and right now they're doing well, because copper is doing well. Right. What about East L.A.? He's still always great. I love the Chicano's. They're cool. One of those, again, new country in my own country experiences. Didn't know anything about Chicano's, really.

Got in with these guys. True 100% Chicano's. As in English is the native language with a Spanish accent. Why? It's the culture. A lot of them are bilingual, but... Spanish? Yeah, but a lot have been here generations,

and they grew up speaking English, but they have a Spanish accent. It's wild. Cool, okay. Look, the car culture is awesome. They love their cars. I get it, yeah, the lowriders, the taco. It's a culture.

It's connected. It really is connected well. It's its own universe out there. And again, it's one of those either here nor there. the Chicano's will say, when we go to Mexico, they call us American, but when we're in the U.S., they call us Mexican. They're in the uncanny valley of Mexicans and Americans. Yeah, right in between. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I made a few videos out there with them, actually a chapter in the book about the Chicanos. And that's what's so rad about America. You have all these different existences coexisting. And my wife says it's a build your own bowl country, as in pick your protein, pick your vegetables, pick your dressing. So pick your culture, your addiction, fentanyl or meth, pick your geography. What do you want mountains? You want oceans? You want your culture, you want your politics even?

Like, choose your own adventure. It's fucking cool, you know, for all that there's problems in this place and it's the misogynistic, capitalistic, hellscape that's trying to bigotly keep everybody down, I understand. But I flew back from, when I flew back from SF, and just the change, that journey from SF to Austin, the change in the landscape looking out of the window is fucking unbelievable. This is, it is everything. I've seen everything on route to it. The only thing I haven't seen is snow. In fact, I probably didn't maybe see some snow, like San Bernardino Valley, if we went over that way. I don't know. there's places that you can snowboard and ski in fucking May

and and it's just it's so varied and that is what makes it cool I remember when I first started coming out here man I mid-20s I started coming out as part of these author projects that I was doing and I would get flown out to Norfolk Virginia and it was just a like military It was right on the bay. So I'm seeing all of the huge military ships coming in and out. And there was one weekend where we were staying at the Sheraton, downtown in Norfolk, Virginia, right on the water.

And there was a powerboat convention going on. Like, every dude had a mustache. Every woman, no matter how old she was, had bleach blonde hair, platinum, super-da. I was like, this fucking rules. This is the sickest shit I've ever seen in my life. And then the next year I went to Baltimore, and it was the 4th of July. And I was in downtown Baltimore, right where the historic ships are, right on that bay. And the motherfuckers are firing cannons.

Fourth of July, there's all of these fireworks going up. I was just on my own. I was like, this is amazing. And I posted a photo on Facebook and put my phone away and I was having a beer or whatever, just on my own. They're walking about. It's like wide-eyed, bushy-tailed. B-ding. B-bing.

B-ding. B-ding. I was like, fucking, all right, fair enough. Get my phone out. It's late US time, so there's no one awake in the UK, and I basically had no friends in the US. All of the people that were running the event were saying, what are you doing downtown in Baltimore?

Do not go past 49th Street. Do not take a turn down there. It's like, what do you mean? No, like, just don't go to 49th Street or whatever. And I was like, well, now I'm fucking going to 48th Street. Okay, so go all the way up. And on every single street corner, there was a cop car with two police officers.

So on every intersection, you would have one, two, three, four cop cars, like on the corners. I'm like, how many fucking cop cars have you guys caught? And they were just sat there. Even that didn't go to 50th Street or whatever. That's fucking fascinating to me. And then did this huge road trip. Went to, fuck, what's the place just near Dollywood? It's like a ski lodge town, begins with a G.

Gatlinburg. Okay. I went to Gatlinburg. Tennessee and this is like a aspenny Swiss ski lodge town that happens to be beautiful weather in the middle of summer. Fourth July Nashville Broadway like it's it's fucking awesome dude like for people that I guess haven't traveled haven't been able to get outside of their home state and see just how much stuff there is to do like this sounds like I'm shilling for the fucking American tourist board or whatever but it's just it's fucking cool it's really good and I'm

glad that I'm here. So where do you think things are going? Where do you see things in five years? Are you optimistic about things? Are you thinking something has to come to a head? I don't know. America is very divided thing seems less true than America is very isolated. I think people are more isolated than they are divided.

And that can cause people to kind of become quite deranged in the way that they see themselves in the world. If you don't touch grass that much, question on a Q and A. This guy was asked a question of, um, you say, I say that the bar is very low for most men and that, you know, if you're a well put together guy with a stable job who's nice and takes care of himself, you're in the top like 5% of all men. And like, I think that's true. And he's like, and yet I see all of this stuff online about how a guy needs to be six foot tall and make six figures a year and I'd be emotionally intelligent. He's got to 10 years of therapy and all of the, I think this is what happens when you spend too much time on the internet.

Yeah. I think the internet takes the most caricatured extreme versions. It's like WWE for sociality. Right. And it turns everything into this K-Fabe pantomime and everybody starts performing. And what I think, what I hope is that we can continue to sort of push people into real world experiences, like stuff like your. travel blogs, I think are really great at reminding people there is a fucking world of adventure

out there off the screen. Adventure is not a staycation at a local fucking yoga retreat that's 30 minutes from your house. Adventure is taking a left down a road that you don't usually go down. I'll never forget, I did, as part of this, I want to see the world thing when I was younger. I did Thailand on my own. I did Bali on my own. The Thailand trip, it was my final full. day on Kosamui. Yeah. No, Kotow. Sorry, Kotow, not Kotoomi.

And me and my $1 per day moped, which had one break on it and was definitely going to kill me. And I was basically just doing tieboxing the whole time I was there. I was going from gym to gym, just fighting. So I thought that would be fun to do. And it would give me a community of people and I'd feel less

alone. That worked out great. Final day, I was driving the trip from the smoothie place I like to go to back toward the gym, but I'd already trained. I was like, there's a turning here on the left. I'm just going to see what's down this road. And that took me two and a half hours and nearly ran out of gas. And one point opened out into this elephant sanctuary that I didn't know was there, wasn't signposted. I saw that, pitched up for a bit, just sat and watched things, pulled back off. And then there's a guy with a huge truck with all of these rolls,

sort of bark spun up and rolled tied up behind him. I looked like a scene out of final destination, like Thailand's final destination. It's all going to fall off and kill someone. And it was like just watching this person thinking, I wonder what that guy's afternoon is going to look like. I wonder where he's going. I wonder what he does.

And I wonder where he lives. And there would be just the opportunity to see, some fucking real shit. Yeah. That is not being fed to you at the velocity that you're used to. I don't know. I mean, I can't tell you basically anything that I watched on the internet last week, but I can tell you a story about Thailand that I remember doing 10 years ago.

Yeah. Like if that isn't how you make a richer life, I kind of don't know what is. And this doesn't mean that you've got to travel all the way to fucking Thailand. Yeah. But, you know. No, you're fully right. It's, there's the on the ground reality and the online reality right now. and the Delta is massive.

And unless you're getting that on the ground reality to balance it out, you know, this thing starts taking over. Everything seems catastrophic. But next five years, what do I think is going to happen? I would like to think that we're going to get some degree of pushback against the level of onlineness.

I wouldn't bet against people's ability to actually be able to look after themselves. and I think that people are way more resilient than we give them credit for. I would be worried about what is happening to young people with technology usage, but Australia and the UK have now both got under 16 bands for social media. Even if you can work around it with a VPN or something, I think that's going to be good, and it wouldn't surprise me. America, unfortunately, the freedom thing actually works against you

with that that sometimes maybe you need a bit of dictatorship, Maybe you need a little bit of bureaucracy and some sort of top-down telling because people hate the idea of losing freedom but also along with freedom the optionality can mean that most people kind of they gravitate

toward the path of least resistance sometimes that's something that they want but isn't good for them something they want but don't need I think a lot will depend on what happens internationally over the next couple of years because that is causing a lot of people to feel quite uncomfortable. One of the biggest niches or most of the biggest trends in finance

on YouTube about six years ago were slow investing 401k's dollar cost averaging. And if you look at 2026, it's all vibe betting, polymarket, calci, get rich quick, crypto. And I think that speaks to the sort of short-termism that people are feeling. Yeah. I don't know if the future. is promised to me. So I'm going to kind of just make immediate reward. I hope that that stops because that's a real recipe for fucking disaster. That's a great point. I call it the RPT. Do you know what the RPT is? No. Okay. Nothing against Russians, but the Russian package tour. So Soviet Union falls in 91. Okay, these people have been behind the wall for decades. All of a sudden travel opens up to Italia Turkey, Shammelshek, Egypt.

So you have these flights from, for people that never were able to leave their country. Chalabinsk, Ufa, Novi-Sibersk, flying into these all-inclusive package tours. So you go, you get your food, your hotel, everything's included. Well, if you've ever been around an RPT, it's like take everything off the table, stuff your pockets, mentality. Good.

Because they've dealt with some. much scarcity and you never know what tomorrow brings. And I'm saying this with some humor too. Okay. So not everyone's participating in the RPT. There is some short term. There's the UPT Ukrainian package tour. There's a Chinese package tour. It's just sort of a joke of the package tour where it's like I paid for this. I'm going to get all I can get. And I feel like the RPT is sort of taken over culture even here in the West, as in, let me get my thing quick. There's nothing long term here. Yeah. Yeah. Get it off. I feel like the whole country's run like the RPT right now. It's like I'm going to make my mo. Here's my meme coin. I'm going to bank. Get out. Nothing long term.

And nothing good really comes from short term thinking. Like you didn't get to where you're at from short term thinking. That's a long grind. Same with me. Even to get the visa, dude. Even to come to the country. It's a very long growing. If it was short term, you would have given up, done something easier. So I totally agree, like, especially young in this country, you need to realize that it's not all social media, obviously. And social media shows RPT mentality.

Anything that's worth something is long game. I mean, it took me until, I mean, I was trying to figure out my life at 38. I was stressing in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco reading everything I could get my hands on. I'm like, WTF am I going to do now? Now you've got a huge YouTube channel and a book deal. Right? But that's from long-term thinking, like having hope. And at the very least, I'd be an old man and be like, at least I went for it.

If it didn't work out. I upped my entire life and moved countries on my own with two suitcases at 34. people who say you should have got your life sorted out by now assume that development comes with age and not work and the whole age thing is it's like that makes sense if you know the day you're going to die if i'm dying at 100 and i have kids at 48 who cares but if i'm going to die at 50 you better have them earlier if you want kids and that's just like this whole you have to do something by a certain timeline thing, I threw that manual out at a young age. So I understand that seems to be a little bit of a contradictory pattern to some of the stuff that you did when you were younger, which is,

I'm not going to be able to travel like this in the same way, perhaps in the future. So it feels like you did have an understanding of part of the timeline. Is that fair to say? With that amount of freedom, like fully untethered, no relationship I was in, no commitments. Yeah, I was sort of foreseeing maybe I won't get that chance again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's actually happening on the American-Mexican border? What's the truth?

Right now? Yeah. Okay. I did a follow-up video because I've done, I don't know, five, six, seven videos. No, seven, eight videos down there. Right now, it's chill.

Crickets. No one's coming over illegally. No way. Nah, nothing. So I started doing, doing border videos when I was moving from California to Florida. And someone reached out and said, you got to come down to the border. And I was in the middle of a move driving across country. I'm like, nah, I'm not going to do that. Too busy. And my wife was like, do it. Go do it. We got to

Florida, dropped my bags, dropped her, and went right to the border in Texas. So not far from here at McAllen. And so I went in with some preconceptions of, you know, why we were. We're going to be a lot of, you know, would you want a border wall? That's, I don't, I don't think that's the right way to go about this. And then after spending time there during that trip, I left. Yeah, you want a border wall down there. Why? Look, if the wall's 30 feet, migrants are going to get a 32-foot ladder.

And they go, it's not stopping everything, obviously. But for customs and border protection, it pinches everyone. They put their technology on the wall. they can see better, they can manage it better. You have to see these landscapes to understand how vast they are. Do you know how much of the border is covered by protective fencing now? I don't know. California, most of California, a lot of Arizona, not all of Arizona, not all of Texas.

It's got to be one of the longest conjoining borders in the world, I have to assume, coast to coast. perhaps, but there are a lot of... Canada will be more, actually. Oh, yeah, that's the longest border actually, Canada. And I've done a story up there too, which was interesting. But... There it is. For the US-Mexico border, roughly 700,750 miles of its nearly 2,000 miles,

have some form of primary fence or wall about 35 to 38%. That is not one continuous wall, much of it is replaced earlier barriers and the remainder is covered by terrain, patrols, sensors, and other enforcement measures. The US-Canada border is overwhelming. unfenced. That's nothing up there. Okay, so I went down. I'm like, I left that first trip. Yeah, you should put a wall up there. The second trip I went to West Texas, where the Rio Grande is. And if you put a wall up there, you give Mexico the whole river. It would destroy those places. So I left that trip being like, yeah, you wouldn't want to. No wall. You wouldn't want to put a wall there. Then I went to Tijuana, and there are two walls between Tijuana and California. Two mega walls. Is it one to keep the Mexicans out and want to keep the Americans out? No, double.

Double Mexicans. Double front. Okay. Because if you didn't have walls there, it'd just be a full-up bum rush, right? To the north. Arizona's interesting. So every sector, there are, I think, 20 sectors in the United States where, like, there's the Yuma sector and the Tucson sector. They're basically different border jurisdictions.

Yuma sector, what I went there. 140 nations were coming through. It was wild. We had an O-TM policy other than Mexicans. A lot of people don't know this. Like, Mexicans could not come over unless they were really good, but the cartel controlled that whole situation. A lot of Indians got Indians on my video from Delhi. Fly Delhi, Mexico City, Mexico City, Mexicali. Cartel picks them up at the airport, like Epcot Center without the name tags, brings them to the gap in the wall, gives a U.S. phone, get to the U.S. side, dial 911.

Our Customs Board of Protection comes on them, and I was there for it's in one of my videos. Quarter, half mile down, Sinolaoal cartels running the Fent, the young girls, all the stuff that's definitely going to get busted on. But at that time, we had to process. It's very confusing topic. And unfortunately, both sides have,

used it as a weapon. But at that time, it was pretty much fair game to claim asylum, depended with the country you're from. But if you're from India and you could say, hey, political persecution, I need to leave. It's dangerous for me to be in India. We had to process them. Buses would come in, pick them up, bring them into a detention center, and then off into the interior, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, all over the country. When, an asylum court hearing, hey, come to this court hearing and the courts are so backed up,

not enough judges, some are five years out, some are seven years out. So the word on the street, or the word in the world was, game on, green light, come on. You just have to pay the cartel

the right amount of money. So it was insane. I should have just, I shouldn't have done my fucking 01. I didn't need to do my O-1. Yeah, you didn't. And then you'd see the fallout in places like Chicago

where all the police stations you had Venezuelan migrants just sleeping out on the floor like you walk into a police station it was just sleeping bags, kids toys, kids playing and all the police officers were just like hating their lives

that was the asylum place they'd been assigned to? Just we weren't, these cities weren't ready for this influx. These places weren't ready and it was just a mad influx and so I don't blame the migrants

because it was green light. I would have done the same. I'm in Honduras six grand of the cartel, I'm going up, I'm making 10 times as much money and live in a better life. But the influx

was insane, unsustainable. I thought my channel was going to get demonetized for sure on that topic and maybe shadow band. But it wasn't. Thank God. I've never had a problem with YouTube,

knocking wood with that. But I thought it was going to have an issue. And I would get in with the sheriffs because the sheriffs can this is a really cool thing about america we have local law enforcement you have city of austin law enforcement right what county are we in Travis Travis okay there's the sheriff's department both doing law enforcement operating completely different the sheriffs are voted in by their constituents the only people that oversee them really are the voters okay where the local police city council

it's tied into local governance. So I can never get in with police departments. The only one, Glendale Police, basically Phoenix, shout out to Glendale Police, they let me do my thing. Other than that, nobody. But the sheriffs, if you get a good sheriff like I got in Yuma County,

Sheriff Wilmot, like straight out of the movie's handlebar mustache, got the cowboy hat on. Unreal. And he brought me in the camera and the audience into stuff that no one was getting access to because Customs and Border Protection

had a gag order. No one could speak. And it was insane. So the problem right now, whatever media you're watching, everything's got to bias. Everything's got a bias. And so some people didn't even know

there was a situation really going on. Other people think, like, America's going to blow up tomorrow. Yep. And there's no real place to go. where truth is the North Star. At least I haven't found it in media. I don't know where you go. You have to read wide. You have to watch wide. So again, a lot of the benefits you have in this country, freedom is one of those amazing, limited restrictions, but also massive optionality

and the inability to coordinate, right? Like you can't get top down with that. The same thing where I don't think that this is the case in the UK, right? You have. Northumbria police constabulary, which will be for Newcastle, the city that I was from, Northumbria being the county. And it's one cohesive unit. And there'll be divisions and whatever else and that. But this means if you've got the sheriff and his guys, then you've got Austin PD and their guys. And then there's probably some bullshit with like Travis County as well, too, trying to coordinate that because you've got these systems that are all trying to interlock. And there'll be a little bit of power struggle. And it doesn't take

much. Anybody that's worked in a company that's grown quickly or anybody that's been a part of a startup or seen any business that's trying to grow, as soon as you go from founder plus founder and assistant plus founder and assistant to someone, it doesn't take long before the dis-economies of scale really come online. All the coordination, the communication problems, things get missed. Everybody's doing the fucking Spider-Man mean thing where they're looking at someone else whose job it's supposed to be. That's what you have in a country that's like that. And because it's so new, there can be little power grabs or we'll build this, we'll build that

and before you know it, why haven't we pruned this area of this particular bureaucracy and the disadvantage that we have in the UK is that because it's been around for so long we've accumulated loads of pomp and circumstance and bullshit. There are all of these,

when I graduated from university, both times there's this insane procession of stuff, there's a mace bearer. The dude carrying a fucking medieval weapon and everybody doths their caps in different orders to people based on hierarchy. And it's like cool and kitschy and old and worldy or whatever,

this old university thing. But like, that's also the way that the police is run. And that's also the way that people have voted in. And that's also the way that the House of Commons works. And that's also the way the banking system works. So because it's old, you have a lot of the bullshit that's been pruned is good. because things that weren't able to contribute

have been gotten rid of, but there's also loads of superfluous, like, horseshit that's in there too. So it's just, again, the only two countries that I can speak on with any degree of non-experty is the UK and the US. And what I see in the US is like a huge coordination problem because it's so big and so sprawling.

And there's been, I don't want to say a power grab, but you guys have had to build quickly for 250 years. Yeah, three lifetimes. Dude, it is nothing. There's trees in my garden that are older, in the UK, that are older than this fucking country. Yeah. So it's not a surprise that it's a challenge. And then changing technologies, you know, whatever's going on geopolitically, people coming across the border, like, it's fucking gnarly.

It's messy. The good side of that would be, hey, without those sheriffs, there's no way any of us would have seen what I could show. if it was all, it was completely top down in that sense. Now, in America's founding, the crown, the king didn't want us to move past Appalachia, too much to manage, too many skirmishes with the natives. I mean, that's what, it's such a massive thing to manage, where if you don't have some of these autonomous things working, in the spirit of America's.

America's all the crazies. You being one of them. Correct. You came here without like no guarantee. You had your thing going. So you had some footing, some foundation. But think of most that came here. They're like, my family going to work out.

How long was the journey for the original migrants that came to America a few hundred years ago? It would be six weeks on it. ship or something from fucking island from some port probably in island or on the west coast of the UK yeah uh my family came over in 1918 on a boat from Italy from Naples no English 18 years old was my it was great grandparents a great grandmother great grandfather they all came into hoboken New Jersey I mean the first European no no more like a little bit like a little bit newer than that's like 1800s Try like, because I have to assume that that would have been,

1800s, most immigrants from Europe and America spent four to eight weeks at sea by sailing ship. Okay, by the late 1800s, steam ships had made it faster. Even one to two weeks on a ship. But that at the start of the 1800s, hey, dude, do you want to go to this place that you have absolutely no idea what it's like? It's basically undeveloped. There isn't much going on. There was a revolution recently. Maybe it's over. I think so. I'm not really too sure. It's going to take between a month and two months. Survival, yeah, maybe. Want to go? Like, that is why this country is filled with people that are risk takers. Like, they're the progeny of people that went, fuck it, let's get on that ship for two months. Let's do it. And then the ones that went west into native lands. Like, how sketchy would that have been? So it attracts that. It always has. And you're the latest iteration.

That's true. Tell me about this thing you did in the Hamptons. Because, you know, when you're thinking about rural, off-grids, you know, I don't immediately think of the Hamptons as being in that mix. So the Hamptons met up with this guy, Jimmy Ding, Ding because he fixes surfboards. The ding's on surfboards. Great name. We started at the dumps. So think of the most boosy, one of the most boosy zip codes in the country.

We started at the dumps. Because Jimmy's old school local. And so what I wanted to show is like you can label the Hamptons. I always thought of starch, linens, helicopters, big pads. But there's a whole working class that lives there in many of these wealthy places. Right. So I just got in his story. Fascinating guy grew up there, fishermen.

And you see a lot of the tension that exists in these places where the real estate shot up so much. How do you hang on? right how does a guy like jimmy in what um period of time did the real estate go vertical well it was always a it was always a place for new york city's elite to get out of the city been desirable for a while yeah but there was enough land and space back in the i believe his family got a place back in the 50s or 60s dirt cheap to get a a normal home and now it's just through the roof and it's everywhere in the country and i think in the UK too right right yeah depends it seems like it's a worldwide phenomenon. It depends where you want to live. The UK is an interesting one. I'm from

the most northerly town that isn't Scotland. I'm as far north as you can go. In Game of Thrones, which is loosely based on the War of the Roses from like the 10,000 AD, Winterfell, which is the fucking freezing cold, dark, miserable place that the Starks are from. That's based on Newcastle. So that's Newcastle. And then there's a wall, right? There's the ice wall. And that's Hadrian's wall, and that's not far from us. So there is a wall that's still there that was meant to keep the barbarians out, and they were the Scots. And if you were to spend maybe now 150,000 pounds, so $200,000, something like that, maybe $180, you could get a very nice family home, probably semi-detached, terraced in a, you know, it would be a 1900 early 1900s builds brick it'll be really nicely but it's not going to be super cool modern but

it'll be kitschy and really really nice and there'll be enough space especially for something in the UK if you take that amount of money and try to go to London you've got two years of rent yeah right three years of rent maybe if you're lucky it is the UK I think is the whatever fifth biggest 10th biggest economy in the world something like that some people look at the UK as a rich country but the UK is a poor country that surrounds a very rich city. And the city is London, and the city is really the city of London. And that is the financial hub, and then you've got this sprawl out into Westminster, and then London and then London and then the other side of the M25,

and it starts to fall off a bit more, and then you get to Birmingham and Manchester and Newcastle. So it's affordable depending on where you want to be. Is there a lot of tension between the London crowd and the rural crowd? Not particularly, at least maybe the rural crowd when it comes to sort of farming and stuff like that. That wasn't something I was integrated in. It certainly felt to me growing up in Stockton on Tees, which is 50 miles south of Newcastle, famous for having the UK's widest high street and the highest teen pregnancy rating in the UK.

And then it lost that. You weren't part of that? I wasn't. I was desperately trying to contribute, but I was a horrendously uncool teenager. And then I never thought of London as being a part of what I was a part of. Okay. It didn't feel like a part of the same country. It was, I guess, and maybe I went when I was like 17 or 18 a few times.

But I, it really is South versus North because the shape of the country is so particular, right? It's long and thin. And you talk about South. No one's talking about East versus West. Like there is a difference between people that are from Liverpool and people that are from Newcastle of people that are from Manchester and people that are from Leeds right going left to right but no one really gives a fuck

like it's just people with different silly accents but north to south as soon as you get below Birmingham and you start to get toward London that's when things there is definitely a sense that oh these are two different cultures don't forget the two kind of different climates like it is different to go it's not that far it's three hours on a train

a pretty quick train, but it's 400 miles, something like that. And that difference is not insignificant when it comes to the weather. Like to go from the northeast where we are to the south coast, because also we're next to the North Sea, that's the coldest sea, I think, in the world. And it's really fucking dangerous. But yeah, there is definitely a detachment.

If you're not in London, you are not really considered much by the press. Press stories aren't bothered about what's going on in fucking Rotherham, right? They don't care about whether Stokon Trent has got some issue that's occurring locally, socially. It will be on local news, but it's not going to break out international news. So it is, it is all of the money and all of the attention is just focused on London. And that's fine. What about Isle of Man? Is that when you have big bucks and you're trying to avoid the taxes? I don't know whether there's a tax haven out there. I know there's a big festival. I've been to. I spent a little bit of time near there, and it's a retirement place for a lot of people. I know that's interesting. I mean, dude, if you look at even the UK, the fucking Hebrides, these islands off the north-west of Scotland, I think. I can look at my map, yeah. Can you pull up Google Maps?

Jared, we can just do it on the big screen. Just search Hebrides for me. And it is so fucking cool up there. I got to get out there. Fred again did a tour. of Stornaway, I think it was. So Storn away is one of these islands. And, yeah, just the amount of variety that you do have in a place that's got such

population density is pretty fucking cool. Yeah, the Hebrides. So look at that, dude. Look at where that is. So zoom in for me, Jared. Kirkwall, what's up there? Yeah, so look at this, dude. Wow.

That's the Hebrides there. And it's just such a, so this was halfway between what this. The fingers, I think, were from Game of Thrones. Look, me, the only reference I can give you is fucking Game of Thrones things. But, yeah, all of that. That's the Isle of Sky that you can see this, S-K-Y-D. I bet the accent really changes out there, huh, on some of those islands? I don't know.

I'm not Scottish enough to be able to tell you what the difference would be between them and somebody that's maybe from Glasgow. Go across for me, Jared, just pan east. Okay, so Berwick-upon-Tweed, top right, there. That is the border. So you can see the border sort of cutting through, and then it cuts down to Northumberland National Park. And there's Anik, which is a place that I would go and go to, like,

there's some national parks, the equivalent of national parks in the UK. The difference between Berwick-upon-Tweed, Anik and Dunbar, is Anik-complet-English accent. Berik-upon-Tweed is 20 miles away. You're like, there's something going on here. And then by the time that you get to another 20 miles away in Dunbar, it is completely Scottish. So the difference is so fucking stark. Yeah.

Remembering that this isn't like driving across the border from France to fucking Switzerland or something. This is you being in the same money, the same everything, but just it is so. And then pan down a bit more for me. And then you can see there's Newcastle. So that's the place that I grew up in and then Stockton-on-Tees below it, which is where I actually. actually was born. So yeah, the north of the UK is kind of fascinating. But dude, you keep going down and you keep going down. There's Leeds. People are kind of interested in Leeds. There's Manchester. Liverpool. Okay, there's some ports and shit that are going on there. But no one gives a fuck. Sheffield, no one gives a

fuck. Nobody cares at all. Keeping going down. Stoke-on-Trent, definitely no one gives a fuck. Nottingham, Birmingham, kind of a little bit. I guess Manchester a little bit. There's some stuff going on. You're still going down. You're still Peterborough, absolutely nothing. Cambridge, Oxford, Luton, St. Albans. And then you get to London, right? You've got the M25, which is that ring that goes around the outside of it. And if you're outside that, people kind of don't really care all that much. There's some bits that people give a shit. There's a big deal in Manchester, maybe Birmingham, but you get away from this,

and people really don't care. They don't even go out to Dover, right? No, no, not really. I don't think. I put my time into Dover. Yeah. Did you know there's an island in the United States and Maryland that some of the old-timers still speak a form of Elizabethan English? No, but I completely endorse it. Yeah. So I met this guy,

I made a video with him. He's actually in the book, too. His name's Jerry. His family's been there 374 years. And he's got, you're going to love the accent. Is there a video of this guy? Can we get video of him up? Okay, what do we search? Smith Island. I would just type in Peter Santonello Smith Island. A lot of Brits watch my channel too. And they're like, that guy, sound straight out of Leeds, I forget where... Okay, oh, this is going to be fucking fascinating. Allow me to diagnose his accent. He's a waterman.

That's a British term, right? This one, his family lived on that one? Yeah, that one. Hey, how are you doing? I mean, this guy's... He's a yarnie. What's a yarnie? Is that a British word?

Yarnie, which means, it's like an old English word for friend. That means friend. Yarnie. Yeah. Yarnie. Hang on, is this the guy that you're thinking has got an English accent? Yeah, I guess not. No, no, I'm sorry. It's southern, southern. It's very fucking southern. There might be a little something going on. A few words come through. All right, let me see someone else. Let me hear

these guys talk. Four or five days would be a good soak time for them now. Guess the kitty fish is ate them all up. They ain't an oyster. I don't know what he said. They're eating oyster too? The mine has it on their pictures. He had minos, oysters, big clams, and a lot of cribs. Okay, so I mean, they look like lovely gentlemen. I wholeheartedly, I wholeheartedly support a,

like, accent-driven recolonization of this country from England, but that is fucking cultural appropriation, if ever I've heard it, if you think that that guy sounds England. I'm sorry. Not pissing on the parade. Cherry's a great guy.

Let's see that guy. Let's see that guy in the black t-shirt. Last chance. Scoot back. Press that, yeah. Or is that the same? That's Jerry. Go. Okay, so maybe it's a bit of a stretch. He says some old English words. Okay.

I don't care about the words. What I care is how they're said. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's not what you say. It's got a bit of a Carolina brogue to it. Yeah. Well, look, me with my smoking pipe, I can, that might help.

After all of the different communities that you've spent time with, like Navajo, Amish, you pick, which one could you see yourself most living with? full-time, do you think? Man. You have to up six and you have to spend the rest of your days somewhere with a community of people. Where would it be? I like being a free agent so much.

You know what I mean? I respect and honor all these groups and I can admire what they're doing and the families that's been in a place for 10 generations. That's really cool. But I've always had friends from every background and never belong to a specific group. And that scares me for some. reason, like just being in that group dynamic. Do you feel displaced a lot of the time from that?

No, I, I, it's almost like I belong everywhere and belong nowhere at the same time. Like, I like learning and like getting into different groups, but to be one, to be Amish, maybe two years, but then after a year two, you're like, do you think this would be harder? Obviously, you did this before you met your misses, but do you think this would be harder if you didn't have the unit, like the, you and another person relationship? unit thing because it feels to me like it could be quite destabilizing you you might feel a little uncertain ungrounded 100 percent so my wife edits so this is our baby this whole thing oh cool this channels a family a family affair we got a mini dog so that's like that's the extent of it so

we it's you and a GoPro it's me and a GoPro I figure out the story she edits well um but we worked And it's some Ukrainian workforce. There are hardworking people. It wasn't my intention, but it turned out that way that we're just, we're fully in it together. So we have that bond, but totally, if I had to hire an outside editor and it was just like sending files of video off and working that way, I think you're right. I think it would be destabilizing.

But I come, we're very tight. I mean, okay, the only two other people, we have a guy that does translation. in Thailand, American guy, just to do the translations for videos in a virtual assistant in Thailand. That, no, Philippines. That takes my emails and puts them in Monday.com for organization. That's it. Do you know Ryan Trahan?

Yeah. Yeah. So Ryan got rid of everybody. No way. Just him and an iPhone. Are you serious? Who at it? Him.

You serious? Correct. The guy that's doing numbers not far off Mr. Beast. is him an iPhone. His wife's there, but just, I think, largely hanging and just like kind of a moral support. Good for him. Him with an iPhone.

And yeah, he's just in the evidence. Because here's the deal with this works. I got the logistics of it. Got to get to the location. Got to figure out the story first. It's a day of shooting. You can either be more of a creator or more of a manager in the video space, I think.

Correct. And I don't want to manage. Like, it hurts the quality of the video. I remember I had someone working for me, and she was great. She set up a lot of stuff in the channel, but there was drama before going out to a video and my password, Facebook password was given to a marketing company. And I'm like, oh, like dealing with chaos. And then we had to blow up.

It wrecks the video. And then I wrecked the video because I went out there and I was late and everything got messed up. So I need to be in my own head and space a long time with no interruptions. There's an essay called ManagerMod. versus Maker Mode by Paul Graham, who is the main guy at YC. Yeah. And it is kind of a fundamental frame that everybody needs to know.

You cannot be in Maker Mode if you're in manager mode. It's actually impossible. And basically, as soon as you get drawn into admin, executive function, planning, logistics, operations, as soon as you do that, no matter what it is, your capacity. to get back into blue sky, sort of fluid thinking, just vibing with it, man, world is basically impossible. And this is the trajectory. I'm literally talking to Ryan Long about this today.

This is the trajectory where people get things wrong when they try to build a business. And it's a temptation. They get things wrong. It is a hurdle that you need to get. It is a series of hurdles, an endless series of hurdles you always need to get over. It's at each one of them that you fall at. slows things down and it worsens the quality of your output. 100%.

It's dangerous. And some people have the skills that they can flip between both quickly. I don't have that. I'm yet to meet anybody that is great at going from manager mode to maker mode. Within the same day, I think you can degrade from starting off making something and then there's a catastrophe and you fall into logistics mode. Yeah. I don't know a single person.

I've never met a single person who can start a day off in manager mode and become maker mode after lunch. it's straight up is a one-way street. Yep. And this is why if you're going to organize your, you know, if you're a burgeoning executive or, you know, an online PT or something, and you have calls or you have to do client check-ins or whatever, just pick a day or a bunch of days and have those written off, start to finish.

I just, I'm in pure Adderall and mottic energy, like cranking out all of my productivity. And then I leave myself time that's sacred or the alternative if you can't take in entire days is to have your morning because you can go from maker to manager but you can't go from manager to maker yeah that makes sense that's the way to do it peter sanninello ladies and gentlemen dude you absolutely fucking rule thank you your content's amazing i really applaud you for trying to bring lightness and you know levity to stories that people think is a little bit more dark where should people go to get everything on you on everything just peter santanello tough name to spell so peter sant and i'll usually come up i got a website with everything the book tour coming

I don't know when you're posting this. Got a book tour. I'm all over the country, signing books. Unreal. Got the book dropping, got the videos on YouTube. So. You're the man. That's where it's at.

I really appreciate you and what you do. So thanks for, thanks for the great conversation. All right. Goodbye, my beauties. See you next time. Dude. Yes. Thank you.

Thank you very much for tuning in. If enjoyed that episode, another one that I know you love. It's just here.